A Brief History of Exploding Whales - Svati Kirsten Narula - The Atlantic.pdf
9
8/5/2014 A Brief History of Exploding Whales - Svati Kirsten Narula - The Atlantic http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/04/exploding-whales/361444/ 1/9 Chaos and Confusion in Ukraine By Alan Taylor Why Nobody Writes About Popular TV Shows By Derek Thompson A Lot of Americans Believe in Spirits By Em m a Gre e n Is This the End of the Republican Civil War? By Molly Ball SVATI KIRSTEN NARULA APR 30 2014, 4:26 PM ET Tweet 179 A dead blue whale washed up on the shore of a small fishing town in Newfoundland last week. A bloated, beached, blubbery bomb of a blue whale. As of 3:30 pm Eastern Time today, the carcass is still intact, but onlookers are worried that it might soon explode. Literally. The concerned marine science communicators at Upwell and Southern Fried Science have created a website devoted to monitoring this situation: HasTheWhaleExplodedYet.com. I kid you not. A Brief History of Exploding Whales It happens! Pretty often, actually. And the results are ... really, really gross. WRITERS James Fallows What Mississippi Catfish Farms Look Like From Above 2:07 AM ET Olga Khazan What if Sanitary Pad Ads Didn't Use Blue Fluid? MAY 7, 2014 Uri Friedman Can Cell Phones Stop Crime in the World's Murder Capitals? MAY 7, 2014 Alexis C. Madrigal What Is a Book? MAY 7, 2014 Adrienne LaFrance An Acid-Spewing ATM That Protects Itself From Thieves MAY 7, 2014 Derek Thompson Why Nobody Writes About Popular TV Shows MAY 7, 2014 Megan Garber All the World's Glaciers, Mapped MAY 7, 2014 Emma Green A Lot of Americans Think the Spirit World Exists MAY 7, 2014 8.4k Share 15 Share Rebecca Blackwell/AP VIDEO 'Stop Telling Women to Smile' An artist's campaign to end sexual harassment on the streets of NYC. More SUBSCRIBE EVENTS NEWSLETTERS BOOKS APPS FEATURES IN FOCUS JUST IN What Mississippi Catfish Farms Look Like From Above FOLLOW US Search POLITICS BUSINESS TECH ENTERTAINMENT HEALTH EDUCATION SEXES NATIONAL GLOBAL VIDEO MAGAZINE
Transcript of A Brief History of Exploding Whales - Svati Kirsten Narula - The Atlantic.pdf
8/5/2014 A Brief History of Exploding Whales - Svati Kirsten Narula - The Atlantic
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/04/exploding-whales/361444/ 1/9
Chaos and
Confusion in
Ukraine
By Alan Taylor
Why Nobody
Writes About
Popular TV Shows
By Derek Thompson
A Lot of
Americans Believe
in Spirits
By Emma Green
Is This the End of
the Republican
Civil War?
By Molly Ball
SVATI KIRSTEN NARULA APR 30 2014, 4:26 PM ET
Tweet
179
A dead blue whale washed up on the shore of a small fishing town in
Newfoundland last week. A bloated, beached, blubbery bomb of a blue whale. As
of 3:30 pm Eastern Time today, the carcass is still intact, but onlookers are
worried that it might soon explode. Literally.
The concerned marine science communicators at Upwell and Southern Fried
Science have created a website devoted to monitoring this situation:
HasTheWhaleExplodedYet.com. I kid you not.
A Brief History of Exploding WhalesIt happens! Pretty often, actually. And the results are ... really, really gross.
WRITERS
James FallowsWhat Mississippi Catfish Farms Look Like
From Above 2:07 AM ET
Olga KhazanWhat if Sanitary Pad Ads Didn't Use Blue
Fluid? MAY 7, 2014
Uri FriedmanCan Cell Phones Stop Crime in the World's
Murder Capitals? MAY 7, 2014
Alexis C. MadrigalWhat Is a Book? MAY 7, 2014
Adrienne LaFranceAn Acid-Spewing ATM That Protects Itself
From Thieves MAY 7, 2014
Derek ThompsonWhy Nobody Writes About Popular TV
Shows MAY 7, 2014
Megan GarberAll the World's Glaciers, Mapped MAY 7, 2014
Emma GreenA Lot of Americans Think the Spirit World
Exists MAY 7, 2014
Julie BeckCan Wikipedia Ever Be a Definitive Medical
Text? MAY 7, 2014
8.4k
Share
15
Share
Rebecca Blackwell/AP
VIDEO
'Stop Telling Womento Smile'An artist's campaign to end sexual
harassment on the streets of NYC.
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SUBSCRIBEEVENTSNEWSLETTERSBOOKSAPPSFEATURESIN FOCUSJU ST I N What Mississippi Catfish Farms Look Like From Above
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POLITICS BUSINESS TECH ENTERTAINM ENT HEALTH EDUCATION SEXES NATIONAL GLOBAL VIDEO M AGAZINE
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8/5/2014 A Brief History of Exploding Whales - Svati Kirsten Narula - The Atlantic
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/04/exploding-whales/361444/ 2/9
Lawson warned that the
worst thing would be for
a person to get too close
to the whale and fall
inside it.
Blue whales are the largest animals on earth. This one has reportedly ballooned
to twice its original size. In the process of decomposition, methane and other
gases accumulate in the body of the whale. The buildup of pressure, plus the
disintegration of the whale's flesh, could cause the whole body to burst.
The town of Trout River, on whose rocky shore the
carcass rests, is bracing for what will come next—
explosion or not, the 81-foot-long corpse is just
plain gross, and it cannot remain out in the open
indefinitely. Emily Butler, the clerk of Trout River,
says the town is at a loss as to how to deal with the
problem. “It’s only going to be a matter of time
before it warms up and the smell becomes
unbearable,” she told reporters on Monday.
Jack Lawson, a scientist affiliated with the Canadian fisheries department, told
the media that his main concern was neither the stench nor the possibility of an
explosion. He warned that the worst thing would be for a person to get too close
to the whale and fall inside it: “The [whale] skin is starting to lose its integrity
and if someone were to walk along, say, the chin — that is full of all that gas —
they could fall in the whale. The insides will be liquefied. Retrieving them would
be very difficult."
“I have fallen through the side of a whale up to my chest," he added. "It’s not
very nice."
It's not exactly uncommon for whales to wash up on land, but the disruptiveness
of such an event depends on how populated that land is by humans. In the case
of Trout River, which only has 600 residents but swells with tourists at this time
of year, it's very disruptive.
According to Canadian news, the whale is one of nine that died earlier this month
after becoming trapped by offshore ice floes. Three of these whales have washed
up on Newfoundland beaches.
Sometimes beached whales erupt on their own, but sometimes humans blow
them up first—as was the case in Florence, Oregon, in 1970. The town of
Florence may have been the first to confront the dilemma that faces Trout River
today.
Oregon officials thought their whale was too big to cut up or burn; they ended up
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A screenshot of hasthewhaleexplodedyet.com, taken around noon Eastern on Wednesday, April 30.
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8/5/2014 A Brief History of Exploding Whales - Svati Kirsten Narula - The Atlantic
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/04/exploding-whales/361444/ 3/9
hiring a highway engineer named Paul Thornton, from the state's transportation
department, to devise a plan. Thornton decided on using dynamite to blast the
whale to bits. He figured that the blown-up pieces of blubber would scatter into
the sea and whatever remained would be scavenged by birds and crabs.
What he did not figure was that the Oregon whale explosion of 1970 would
generate one of the most-watched Internet videos in history and become the
highlight of his career.
In an obituary for Thornton, who died in October 2013, Elizabeth Chuck of NBC
News describes what happened that day:
Bystanders were moved back a quarter of a mile before the blast, but were
forced to flee as blubber and huge chunks of whale came raining down on
them. Parked cars even further from the scene got smashed by pieces of
dead whale. No one was hurt, but the small pieces of whale remains were
flecked onto anyone in the area.
To make matters worse, a large section of whale carcass never moved from
the blast site at all. In the end, highway crews buried all the pieces and
particles of the whale.
Broadcast journalist Paul Linnman, who had been on the scene, recalls that "the
piece that flattened the car was about coffee-table size."
Today, Oregon's policy for dealing with dead beached whales is to bury them in
the sand.
The world now knows that blowing up whales on purpose is best avoided.
However, dead whales can still detonate on their own. In 2004, for example, the
carcass of a sperm whale was being towed through the streets of Tainan City,
Taiwan, when its belly burst, splattering blood and guts on nearby people, cars,
and storefronts.
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The Exploding Whale
8/5/2014 A Brief History of Exploding Whales - Svati Kirsten Narula - The Atlantic
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/04/exploding-whales/361444/ 4/9
A similar, albeit less messy, mishap occurred with a beached sperm whale in the
Faroe Islands last November. The marine biologist who probed the carcass was
dressed for the occasion; he later told reporters that the explosion, which was
triggered when he tried to cut the whale open, "wasn't a shock." Still, as the video
below shows, the whale spewed furiously.
And here's a video of what happened in Uruguay a few months ago, when a dead
whale fell as it was being hoisted by a crane onto a truck bed:
These things happen.
0:00 / 1:10
Exploding sperm whale carcass caught on camera ...
0:00 / 1:39
Dead sperm whale explodes after falling from crane
The Taiwan whale explosion of 2004 (Reuters)
8/5/2014 A Brief History of Exploding Whales - Svati Kirsten Narula - The Atlantic
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/04/exploding-whales/361444/ 5/9
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Join the discussion…
• Reply •
Aaron • 8 days ago
"The sand dunes there were covered with spectators and landlubber newsmen, soon to
become land blubber newsmen, for the blast blasted blubber beyond all believable
bounds."
That still kills me. It's too bad it was clipped out of this version of the video.
44
• Reply •
Jill P McMahon • 8 days ago
Is it possible to vent the carcass so the gases don't build up?
4
• Reply •
dsinghe • 7 days ago Jill P McMahon
Let that be a lesson to you kids. Learn a trade. There's good money in carcass-
venting these days.
45
• Reply •
Bartmann_van_Ghent • 7 days ago dsinghe
LOVE IT!
1
• Reply •
Jill P McMahon • 7 days ago dsinghe
The new old economy. The pay ought to be good.
1
• Reply •
Lala • 7 days ago Jill P McMahon
There is so much flesh and fat involved in a whale carcass that it's impossible
(without cutting it into chunks,) to properly a vent an entire whale to prevent
explosions. The digestive system is really what causes the most havoc; all the
bacteria are still in there, still digesting the animal from the inside out--that's what
produces all that pungent methane.
9
• Reply •
Bartmann_van_Ghent • 7 days ago Jill P McMahon
I love the way you casually throw "vent the carcass..." into the conversation.
4
• Reply •
Jill P McMahon • 7 days ago Bartmann_van_Ghent
Decades ago, I used to work in a lab where we had mostly defleshed
carcasses soaking in Biz in preparation for becoming part of the
department's reference skeleton collection. I can almost smell it as I type.
1
• Reply •
Bartmann_van_Ghent • 3 days ago Jill P McMahon
I can almost taste the miasma of defleshed carcasess you
described!
• Reply •
Jill P McMahon • 8 days ago
No, I do not volunteer.
15
• Reply •
Zach • 7 days ago
Shouldn't terrestrial animals decompose in the same way? Why do we not blow up if left
out? For that matter why do whales not do this when decomposing after dying at sea (I
assume they don't because if they filled with gas one would expect they would float)?
Also what would be the problem with attaching this to the back of a boat, towing it a few
miles out to sea and cutting it free?
2
Nick • 7 days ago Zach
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8/5/2014 A Brief History of Exploding Whales - Svati Kirsten Narula - The Atlantic
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/04/exploding-whales/361444/ 7/9
• Reply •
Nick • 7 days ago Zach
How do you think it wound up on the beach in the first place?
4
• Reply •
TomLuTon • 7 days ago Zach
They do. There are cases of exploding cows. But most of the time land animals
are either killed by predators and eaten, or the carcass gets torn open by
scavengers before serious decomposition like this sets in. The blubber layer
around the whale's body acts like a balloon, holding the gases in.
As for the dragging out to sea, the whale is 81 ft long, and probably weighs over
150 tons. There's no part of the whale sturdy enough to latch onto that wouldn't rip
off long before enough force could be applied to drag the whole body.
23
• Reply •
pats • 7 days ago Zach
All decomposing organic organisms emit gasses including methane. It’s a natural
process called putrefaction, in which the soft tissues of the body decompose via
the action of micro-organisms (bacteria, fungi and protozoa) and result in the
catabolism of tissue into gases, liquids and simple molecules. Usually, the first
visible sign of putrefaction is a greenish discoloration of the skin due to the
formation of sulfhaemoglobin in settled blood. The process progresses into
distension of tissues (aka bloat) due to the formation of various gases (hydrogen
sulfide, carbon dioxide, methane, ammonia, sulfur dioxide and hydrogen). As the
pressure builds, fluids are emitted from the nose, mouth, anus, etc. Loss of skin
integrity due to decomposition and insect activity eventually cause the carcass to
rupture.
In other words -- yes, human remains also “blow up”.
14
• Reply •
Jill P McMahon • 7 days ago pats
Also producing cadaverine and putricine.
3
• Reply •
Swiftright Right • 7 days ago Zach
I saw a dead deer near a stop sign pop and cover the lead car with gore. I was 10
cars back and the stench literally made people vomit out their windows. I did a u
turn because the smell was making me sick too.
4
• Reply •
The Wet One • 6 days ago Zach
They most assuredly do. Apparently folks in old folks home die after eating dinner
bloat up really fast too (as in hours). My mother in law to be told me the story about
that the other day. Creates quite a mess as the digestive process continues
working after death and the gas forces matters along.
1
• Reply •
Evan • 7 days ago
Reminds me of the classic B horror film Tremors. One of Kevin Bacon's finest movies in
my opinion.
7
• Reply •
CPA01 • 7 days ago
Ha! My roommate's dad was there on the Florence beach back in 1970. Funny stuff.
5
• Reply •
Swiftright Right • 7 days ago
Holy exploding whale. That shot video with the man cutting it open looks like it literally
could have killed him if he had been standing a bit to the right. That whale ejected what
looked like at least 100 pounds of material a good 30 foot and it looks like close to a ton
(or more) blew out of the hole.
stevenharnack • 7 days ago Swiftright Right
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• Reply •
stevenharnack • 7 days ago Swiftright Right
If you look at the spot where he was cutting you see that he was given some
warning as a bulge started growing, portending the coming explosion. It also
looked as if he had some knowledge about what he was attempting, unlike poor
Thornton
• Reply •
Overburdened_Planet • 6 days ago
Here's my favorite:
haschrischristieexplodedyet.co...
• Reply •
Chris Hernandez author • 6 days ago
The guy in the Faroe Islands cut the whale's weiner off. If some guy did that to me, I'd try
to kill him with an explosion too.
1
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8/5/2014 A Brief History of Exploding Whales - Svati Kirsten Narula - The Atlantic
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/04/exploding-whales/361444/ 9/9
